The Kozhukhovsky municipal shelter for homeless animals is being evicted. The largest shelter in Moscow, which contains more than three thousand dogs and 400 cats. Now it is located ten minutes from the Nekrasovka metro station, but by the end of February, the pets will need to be transported to a new place — forty kilometers from the Moscow Ring Road, to the territory of the former Malinki landfill. Most dogs are old people, aggressors and those who are undergoing serious treatment. Volunteers are afraid that these animals will not survive the move. The thing is that the dogs from the shelter, having experienced a lot of things, even under sedatives, react inadequately to the cage. They break their teeth, pull out their claws in an attempt to get out of it. There is, of course, an option — to put to sleep for a while. But in the elderly, anesthesia may not pull the heart.
Those who make it to their new backwoods alive will not receive any medicines, nor the help of volunteers and doctors. Because volunteers and doctors are not made of iron.
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It smells of corvalol, dog and cat urine. It is noisy in the hospital on the territory of the shelter. The squeak of the devices interrupts the barking. Two workers are pushing a meter-high cage across the corridor. Inside it is a red dog. It is cramped for him, he has to go half-sitting. He leaned back against the side wall. It seems that he is dozing with his eyes open. Leads them to the ceiling and back, examines us. The guy does not have a name yet, he was only brought today. Passers-by were found hanging from a tree in the forest.
Photo: Vlad Dokshin/Novaya Gazeta
“I don’t know if she will survive…” Anya, a black-haired girl, a volunteer, sticks her finger to a dry black nose. — Didn't make it to the end. Left to suffer. Hang up to the end, since such an infection. But no. Shall we fight, my sweet? Let's fight.
A baby is brought into the operating room in his arms — a fawn puppy in a protective collar so that he does not pick at the seams. “Now a stream of dog and cat problems will go to the doctors,” says Anya. Each volunteer is assigned certain dogs — and one day a week for their walking. Anya has over a hundred dogs. She, like many other volunteers, comes on weekends and every time she visits she finds new problems: someone stands above the snow, tries to push to go to the toilet, and defecates blood, and someone cannot get out of the enclosure, because paralysis happened at night and the hind legs failed …
Inside the veterinary unit. Photo: Vlad Dokshin/Novaya Gazeta
On days when there are no walks, dogs walk by themselves. Feces are cleaned out with shovels by workers. They also need to fill in food, change water.
Two years ago, during the first quarantine in Moscow, the shelter was closed to volunteers for two and a half months.
— For the third month we were allowed to enter. Many dogs have atrophied paws. Many began to simply kill each other,” Anya recalls. — The roof went.
A dog with spinal injury in recovery room «. Photo: Vlad Dokshin/Novaya Gazeta
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Anna leads us into a quiet white corridor. Postoperative.
Inside there are six iron doors. Six «chambers», more like prison cells. Through the window in the door, closed by a cage, you can see the patients. Patient number one: an overweight red dog. Strong. With a long tail and powerful paws. A piece of wool is shaved in a square from the tail to the middle of the back. Seams impregnated with brilliant green stretch exactly along the spine. Blood oozed from the wound before, but now it oozed like a jet and dried up. «Injury to the spine. Drain urine with a catheter, amoxiclav, neuromidin, suture treatment, ”the patient’s card says.
In the next room there is a persistent smell of tray filler. More than twenty cells. “No one will take them. Those who are in treatment. Who is shot down, who is thrown out.
A chocolate-colored puppy diligently digs its nose into the burgundy bedspread on which it sits. Tries to look at us. He tries to break away from digging, it is clear that he is trying very hard, but he cannot. Anya says there is a plague. The nervous system has been damaged.
Anna. She has more than a hundred «wards» in the shelter. Photo: Vlad Dokshin/Novaya Gazeta
These are not Anina's wards, she knows about them «from the top», but she checks everyone anyway — she looks under the pillowcases on the cages. Pillowcases — “so that they don’t loom in front of each other, don’t make you nervous.”
— I came yesterday — I have a paralyzed young dog lying in an aviary in the snow. Paralyzed from frost. What if I didn't come? I just came to hand over the blankets, «hello» to say to everyone, this was not my shift.
Who will help her forty kilometers from Moscow? Who will visit her? Who will see her?